The Legacy (37 page)

Then what had given her that prickling of unease?

Sabina crouched down and scanned the North Tower, squinting to gauge the distance of open land she must cross before she reached its derelict façade. A short way, which she could do in a few minutes, if the sentries did not spot her first.

Then it occurred to her. The night was completely silent, the crickets’ voices absent. Someone had disturbed the night insects and animals before she arrived in this spot, and they had not yet resumed their night sounds. Someone was out here, or had been very recently.

Alarmed, Sabina looked hastily about her, trying to sense any danger. Using the dark cloak and scarf she wore as camouflage, she tried her best to blend into the night.

She went around the trunk of a tall pine tree just outside the clearing, and stood with her back to it. Motionless, staring so hard into the darkness her eyes ached, she waited for the intruder, if there was one, to reveal himself to her through his movements.

She saw nothing. Gradually, the sounds of the night returned, the crickets starting in with their mournful chirps, then the hoot owl and the nightingale joining them in song. Still, Sabina did not move. She waited, breathing slowly in order not to make a sound.

Suddenly, the night air was rent with the screams of an animal howling in pain. Sabina jumped and shook her head at her own foolishness. Some poor animal likely got its paw caught in a huntsman’s illegal trap. In order to feed their hungry families, despite the threat of severe punishments levied for poaching, some peasants still trapped the forbidden forestlands in secret, hoping they would not get caught and have to pay the penalty with the loss of a hand or worse.

Sabina listened helplessly, flinching at the sounds of an animal in unbearable agony.

There was something … strange … about that sound. Something …

Words.
She could hear words. Dear God, that was no animal. It was a person, screaming in pain!

The ghastly sound of another human’s anguish reached out to her from across the clearing. She realized the screams came from the castle, but she could see nothing from her vantage point behind the tree trunk. She suspected someone was being hideously tortured, and a shaft of nausea ripped through her.

What had the baron done now?

She did not know what to do. Should she go to the castle and try to find out what was happening and stop it if she could? Or should she run back to the city wall and try to bring the sentry to help? She doubted he would leave his post, not on the report of a woman who merely heard a scream and saw nothing. Besides, what if everything was over before she got back? What if the baron
was
torturing someone and hid the evidence before she could return with help? Nay, she needed to see with her own eyes. If she should be called to testify against him, she would then be able to say more than she heard a scream one night in the dark forest.

Determined, she looked again into the clearing, and made her way cautiously around the tree. After setting the lantern on the ground, she pulled out the dagger and made a silent but hasty dash across the moat, praying she would not wind up with an arrow in her heart from some sharp-sighted sentry of whom she was as yet unaware.

As she ran across the clearing, two pairs of startled green eyes watched her go.

W
hat the devil—?” Wolf said under his breath. He quickly glanced at Peter to see if he had spotted the same fleet-footed shadow running across the moat. The stunned expression on Peter’s face said he had.

The figure, who wore a dark gray cloak making it almost indistinguishable against the darkness of night, arrived at the other side of the clearing and scurried quickly around to the North Tower wall, where it paused for a short time. Then, suddenly, it disappeared into the walls.

With a nod of silent communication, the men simultaneously rose and headed into the clearing, both of them knowing without speaking who the figure was.

As soon as Wolf and Peter had learned of Sabina’s destination, they had mounted their horses and ridden like madmen to try and beat her here. Wolf reasoned they might just manage to do so, since she was on foot and only minutes had elapsed from the time the stable lad had seen her cross outside the city walls to when he reported her escape. Wolf had blistered the ears of the young sentry who stood guard, and promised him quick retribution for allowing his wife to exit the city unprotected. Then, not certain of which route she may have taken, he had ridden most of the way up the steep incline between the city and the castle, stopping to search for her every so often in the dark woods. Not finding her, they had tied their horses up and decided to go the rest of the way on foot.

Caution was absolutely necessary—with the goings-on of war in the nearby regions, and with desperate criminals still trying to elude capture, it was possible anyone could be using the dense woods as a hideout. He was sick with fear at the danger she had put herself in because of his callousness.

What had she been
thinking?

They had only just arrived at the edge of the forest when they heard the screams.

Peter reacted instinctively, grabbing his sword from its scabbard, obviously intending to charge the clearing, but something made Wolf stop him. He listened carefully.

“It is a man’s screams,” he whispered, and Peter nodded. The relief on his face made it evident what he had thought.

Wolf motioned to the Tower now.

Peter gestured and whispered, “Go.”

Wolf reached the castle wall ahead of his brother, fear for her safety propelling him forward. He searched for a breach in the wall where Sabina must have entered—there was no other way inside he could determine—and finally found it.

Years before, several of the stones making up the tower had apparently fallen away from the wall. Someone had shoved them back into place without any mortar to hold them together. Peering through the opening, Wolf discovered the thick, fifteen foot wall had been hollowed out long ago to form a makeshift tunnel into the castle. Anyone who knew about the breach could easily enter the castle at will this way, and evidently had, as the stones lying useless on the ground now revealed. Wolf clenched his jaw, damning the man who was charged with the care and upkeep of this castle.

Wolf heard those awful screams again followed by a bout of pitiful sobbing. Urgency pounded in his veins. He would not think of Sabina enduring what that man suffered.

His brother joined him. Wolf put a finger to his lips in a wordless call for silence and motioned with his sword to the narrow opening. Peter nodded and the two men carefully pulled out several more stones, making the breach wide enough to allow them both to fit within it side by side, swords extended. It was a sensible precaution. They might have to fight their way back out. Satisfied, Wolf nodded and turned toward the breach.

They were going inside, where Wolf was certain his wife had already gone.

Sabina watched with horror at the tableau below. She’d crept up the narrow, worn staircase and used the large key Agnes had given her to open the tower room door at the top of the stairs. The room had been used recently. There were freshly burned candles in the wall sconce, and the large sea chest of which Agnes had spoken sat in the middle of the only piece of dusted furniture in the room, a small rectangular table. Ancient floor-to-ceiling tapestries hung on the walls, their faded colors muted beneath years of dust and cobwebs.

Long ago, the room had been used to house noble prisoners in preparation for being ransomed, but had subsequently been converted into overflow sleeping quarters back in the days when the baron still entertained large hunting parties; it had since fallen into disrepair. The only light in the room came from the high, narrow window carved into the stone.

She stood on the stone outcropping from the wall and stared down from the tower room to the inner ward below. The light from the torches set up at intervals on the wall below the tower barely pierced the space above it, so she knew no one could see her; even so, she was careful to stay hidden.

She could see the baron lying prostrate on the ground, bleeding profusely from the mouth and ears, his eyes swollen hideously shut by a beating. Worse, she saw with horror two fingers of his right hand had been roughly hacked off. Blood flowed freely from them. A large man stood menacingly before him with the wide blade of a butcher’s ax glinting in the torch light, while another armed man held the baron’s hand down by standing on his wrist.

Several castle guards and a few others unknown to her, obviously already dead, had been dragged into a corner of the bailey and lay piled together like cordwood, bloody limbs grotesquely dangling. The remaining servants were lined up against a far wall; some sobbed, some stared stoically ahead while two armed men held a young maid motionless between them. One of those men had the girl’s arms tied behind her, with one hand clamped to her breast and the other hand holding a knife to her throat; two others guarded the servants. The threat was clear—interfere, and the girl would be killed.

A final man stood watching the entire scene, interested and yet detached at the same time; she had the distinct impression he was the ringleader of the group. The only one dressed in armor, he also wore a sword and buckler. The others were dressed in the coarse clothes and sandals of the peasant class. She could barely hear as the armored man’s voice drifted up to her, but his air of authority was unmistakable. As he spoke, she caught snatches of his words.

“… so you still deny me … Godless sycophant… yield me your treasures or yield another finger!” He motioned to the big man with the ax, and the man positioned another of the baron’s fingers in place to be cut off. “… shall be reserved for the poor … when we rule Saxony …”

“Nay, please!” the baron begged, sobbing. Tears ran down his face, streams of mucus flowing out of his nose along with the blood while he pleaded for mercy. His answer floated up to her now in bits and pieces.

“… no treasures … swear it to you! Everything … gone … sold it all! Please do not hurt me again …”

Sabina inched closer in order to hear better, making certain she could not be spotted from below.

The big man holding the ax looked questioningly at the man in charge. “…
Herr
Müntzer? Should I … another one?” he asked the man, his words reverberating hollowly against the stone walls.

Müntzer! Thomas Müntzer? Holy Mother. What was he doing in her father’s castle?

She knew he had eluded the princes’ troops, and still hid out, but no one knew he was in Wittenberg, or indeed anywhere near Saxony. He must have slipped in without the authorities being aware. The broken stones outside the tower had told of how he had entered the castle despite the guard—by stealth and treachery. Now he tortured Baron von Ziegler to gain access to his riches, as he had done to the nobles of forty other castles, and to the cloisters he had attacked throughout Thuringia in the past few days. However, then he’d had an army behind him—now all she could see was a half-dozen men with him, unless some were standing guard where she could not see them.

At the big man’s question, Müntzer stared thoughtfully at the baron, who gazed pleadingly back. He nodded, and the man with the ax hacked off another finger. The baron’s screams filled the ward, and Sabina clapped a hand over her mouth, thinking she might be sick. She had seen enough.

She stepped back quickly—straight into a pair of strong arms. An iron hand went around her mouth as she drew in a breath to scream, and she was hauled down from the stone like a sack of parsnips.

Instantly, she heard Wolf’s rough whisper in her ear, “Shhh.”

She went limp with relief.

“Oh, thank God,” she murmured when he removed his hand. She saw then Peter stood with him, and felt better still—a feeling that quickly fled when she turned and saw the thunderous expression on Wolf’s face.

Wolf shook her roughly, silently, so hard it made her teeth click together. He was angry, she could tell—unbelievably furious. And he had a right to be, since by her actions she had inadvertently endangered them all. It was obvious he had pursued her here, since he had no other reason to be at the castle at this time of the night. Part of her warmed at the thought he must feel something for her if he had come to find her in such haste, though how he had known where she’d gone, she could not fathom. She did not care, not as long as he had come.

He dipped his head toward her, and even in the cheerless dark, she saw him mouth the words
damned-fool woman
—and then he clasped her to him, burying his face in her hair. His body shook against hers, and she realized with a shock he trembled with emotion. Crushed in his embrace, she gazed helplessly over his shoulder at Peter, questioning him with her eyes as to what was wrong with Wolf.

He rolled his eyes as if to say,
What do you think?

Wolf shook in what she could only guess was a belated reaction to finding her safe, though in a place full of danger. This was more than abstract concern—this was the terrifying fear of a man who had thought he had lost someone who mattered to him. His hold on her finally slackened enough for her to pull back and stare into his eyes. What she saw there gave her heart wings.